Patient Cyprus photographer captures the perfect shot
Rare sightings of the Red Sprite weather phenomenon were caught on camera this week by a patient Cyprus photographer who spent over seven hours getting the perfect shot.
On Wednesday night photographer George Paraskevaides managed to capture the Red Sprites off the Famagusta coast.
They are large-scale electric discharges that occur in the mesosphere, high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky that are coloured red.
They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground and appear as luminous red-orange flashes.
Paraskevaides said he had to wait around seven hours at night in the Cape Greco area before he managed to snap the perfect shot.
He has been trying to capture Red Sprites occurrences for over a year, before snapped the picture on Wednesday, thought to be the first clear one ever recorded in Cyprus.
To record Red Sprites, a line of intense storms needs to take place from 200 to 800 kilometres away from the observer.
The closer the storms, the higher the Red Sprites will appear. The natural phenomena are extremely challenging to observe with the naked eye as they last only a few milliseconds and require an almost total lack of light pollution.